Facebook Live

While Chalene has developed a number of businesses, most people associate her with fitness and a program called Turbo Kick that she created for fitness instructors to teach in health clubs.

Instructional videos were part of the program and when a cast member fell ill, Chalene was forced to be on camera. Since that time, she’s done many videos and discovered the more she relaxed, the better she could connect with her audience, whether it was for fitness or business.

Chalene first broadcast live on Periscope in the summer of 2015. She remembers it well because it was also the day she was hacked. Chalene stresses there’s no correlation between the two events. You can listen to Episode 158 of this podcast for the backstory.

When she got early access to Facebook Live, Chalene went live and applied what she’d learned on Periscope. Her first Live reached a half-million people within 20 minutes and she knew it was a game-changer.

Chalene shared the value of Facebook Live with her audience during a Live Q&A.

Listen to the show to discover Chalene’s philosophy on the importance of doing things that are scary.

What Facebook Live Is All About

Chalene believes Facebook Live is like TV, meaning you can use it to spread your message, become famous, or have a reality TV show.

Mike and Chalene discuss the connection between bloggers becoming paid authors, musicians on YouTube becoming paid recording artists, and the likelihood that a future show host will be discovered through Live video.

Listen to the show to hear why podcasters should consider live-streaming video.

How Chalene Goes Live

Chalene and her team have an organic plan in place for her Live videos. The calendar is set around the promotion of the Virtual Business Academy, the Marketing Impact Academy, and Smart Success. Eighty percent of the content for each Live broadcast relates to the upcoming promotion, so it attracts the people interested in the related product. Currently, she’s promoting Smart Success.

Chalene is currently promoting Smart Success, so her content is designed to attract people interested in this product.

Chalene aims to go live a couple of times each week. She’s noticed that the longer she broadcasts, the better the video does in terms of reach and live viewers. Often, she plans to go live for 15 minutes but ends up broadcasting for an hour.

Chalene’s Live prep starts when she wakes up at 5:45 AM. She spends the first hour of her day in learning mode focusing on a certain topic. She then finds a way to relate what she’s studying to the product she’s promoting.

For example, since she’s studying the neuroscience behind behavior, discipline, and habits, she’ll do a Live broadcast about developing good habits, which ties into her promotion of Smart Success. To prepare, Chalene writes down a proposed title, five bulleted discussion points, and any research or stats she wants to reference.

This Live broadcast dealt with issues that relate to Chalene’s Smart Success product.

She describes how to start a broadcast and in which order to share information.

In the first 10 seconds, tell people what you’re talking about and why they need to stay tuned. Next, introduce yourself, say hello to a few people so they know the broadcast is live, and then go into the content.

Chalene goes through the first two discussion points without much interaction, then breaks for some questions. She then finishes up the last three points and wraps the broadcast with more questions.

Listen to the show to discover what equipment Chalene uses for her Live broadcasts.

After the Live Video

Typically, the promotion of Chalene’s Live video is minimal. That said, there are exceptions.

Sometimes Chalene goes live at a time that isn’t ideal, like at night when no one is online (the video below was broadcast at 8:55 PM). She’ll reshare the broadcast on her Facebook page the next morning with a post such as, “I can’t believe you might have missed this, but in case you did, here it is again.”

A late night Facebook Live broadcast from Chalene Johnson.

When Chalene wants her audience to weigh in on the content, she’ll go on Snapchat and say, “I went live last night. Here’s the link. Take a screenshot, because I want to see your comments after you’ve watched it.”

Listen to the show to hear our thoughts on video thumbnails.

Content From the Facebook Live Video

Chalene describes what she and her team do with the content from her Facebook Live videos.

When she goes off the air, her Live video is automatically saved to her iCloud account. From there, she uploads it to Dropbox.

Her virtual assistant then takes the video from Dropbox, strips the audio, puts a bumper at the beginning and end, edits out anything that doesn’t relate to the content, and turns it into a podcast.